the abstraction of her mind. Her beautiful hair was gathered up
loosely, and partially bandaged by a kerchief, whose purple color seemed
to deepen the golden hue of the tresses. A stray curl escaped, and fell
down the graceful neck. A loose morning robe, girded by a sash, left
the breeze that came ever and anon from the sea to die upon the bust
half disclosed, and the tiny slipper, that Cinderella might have worn,
seemed a world too wide for the tiny foot which it scarcely covered. It
might be the heat of the day that deepened the soft bloom of the cheeks
and gave an unwonted languor to the large dark eyes. In all the pomp of
her stage attire, in all the flush of excitement before the intoxicating
lamps, never had Isabel looked so lovely.

By the side of the actress, and filling up the threshold, stood
Gionetta, with her hands thrust up to the elbow in two huge recesses on
either side her gown,--pockets, indeed, they might be called by
courtesy; such pockets as Beelzebub's grandmother might have shaped for
herself, bottomless pits in miniature.

"But I assure you," said the nurse, in that sharp, quick, earsplitting
tone in which the old women of the South are more than a match for those
of the North,--"but I assure you, my darling, that there is not a finer
cavalier in all Naples, nor a more beautiful, than this Inglese; and I
am told that all the Inglesi are much richer than they seem. Though
they have no trees in their country, poor people, and instead of twenty-
four they have only twelve hours to the day, yet I hear, cospetto! that
they shoe their horses with steak; and since they cannot (the poor
heretics!) turn grapes into wine, for they have no grapes, they turn
gold into physic, and take a glass or two of pistoles whenever they are
troubled with the colic. But you don't hear me! Little pupil of my
eyes, you don't hear me!"